Tip Criteria, Pt. 1: Food, Trains, Beauty

July 17, 2008

We receive hundreds of tip submissions on tourist attractions every week. Many are simple eyewitness acknowledgments of the continued operation or existence of a place already well documented. More substantial updates, with new info and a photo or two, may be added to the site. And then there are the new places, which are always exciting to discover and add to the collection.

We diligently filter submissions to keep the RoadsideAmerica.com particle beam of fun focused on the kind of unusual and offbeat places we most enjoy.

We ask ourselves: Is it funny, scary, mysterious, unique, stupid, or over-the-top…. or some combination of these wholesome attributes?

This means whole categories of submissions just don’t fit. They may be perfectly wonderful attractions, but better suited to another web site (There are exceptions, which we can address in a future post).

Before you submit a tip, here’s a little guidance on what to avoid:

- Restaurants where the food is really excellent. RoadsideAmerica.com is never only about food (unless it’s GIANT food). If there isn’t a 2-headed calf over your table or a waiter throwing a hot roll at your head, it may miss the mark.

- Train museums and restored depots. Yes, we know — there’s a huge audience of railroad buffs who drool uncontrollably at the thought of a 19th century train engine. There are too many of these places, though, and we lack the mental roundhouse to sort them out. Exceptions: Train made of cheese? Box car filled with paper clips? Bobbing ghost light from hook-handed brakeman killed by train? We’re there.

- Beauty. A rule of thumb: if the first adjective that pops into your head about an attraction is that it is “beautiful,” you may have us mixed up with AwesomeScenicVistas.com. We don’t cover pretty scenery, most natural wonders (unless they’ve been unnaturally named or manipulated), National Parks, pristine lakes, quiet contemplative glades*. You get the idea.

* Unless it contains a tiny church AND Bigfoot.

Sections: RA Site Stuff
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San Jose - Road Trip Exhibition

July 16, 2008

If you’ve convinced yourself you can’t afford to drive very far this summer, and you live in the San Francisco Bay area, you probably need to go to the San Jose Museum of Art to see an exhibition called Road Trip. It may inspire you to hit the asphalt after all, or at least use up an afternoon when you would have been driving somewhere.

Lucy Larson writes: “The artwork starts with historical images of the road — think Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans — and moves through road trip sub-themes such as “The Quest, “Wish You Were Here,” and “When Road Trips Go Bad.” For the education areas, visitors can create postcards and mail them directly from the gallery. We’re also hoping people will mail us postcards from their summer vacations to have available for visitors to flip through.”

Send your card to: Road Trip, San Jose Museum of Art, 110 South Market Street, San Jose, CA 95113

The Road Trip exhibition runs from September 19, 2008 - January 25, 2009 at the San Jose Museum of Art. Watch the exhibit’s giant artichoke promo.

Sections: Events
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It Really Is All About The Benjamins

July 16, 2008

The problem with robot animatronic dummies has always been the -atronic part. Cams whir, connecting rods clank, and you’re always waiting for a belt to seize and flames to explode out of Abraham Lincoln’s head.

Now a company in New Jersey has advanced the mad science of the pseudohuman host with what it calls the “SpokesMannequin”(TM). It’s a 3-D human face projected onto a matching 3-D dummy head, creating something somewhat akin to human life. The rest of the dummy is just a dummy, so there are no moving parts.

One of these ‘droids, a motion-sensor-triggered Ben Franklin, has been installed at the entrance to the Newman Money Museum in St. Louis. “The character speaks with obvious relish about Franklin’s pivotal role in the development of currency,” a press release claims. Wayne Sullivant, president of the SpokesMannequin company, told us that Ben also has “a nice costume and an historically accurate chair.”

Ben’s face on the $100 bill certainly helped in his selection as the Money Museum’s host, and took us back to an earlier, and eerily similar use of robot Ben, in Enterprise Square USA. There the paper money heads of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton spoke and sang about the glory of free markets. Their spiel was accompanied by the clacking of solenoid switches, the hissing of pneumatic pumps, and the clatter of nutcracker jaws. We will miss that in the new Ben, but maybe as his DVD decays it will create new and terrifying optical effects, hitherto unseen.

Sections: Attraction News
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One Less Nose To Rub: Daniel Boone’s Luck Runs Out

July 14, 2008

The list of rub-a-dub body parts for tourists just got a little shorter.

According to an article in the Warrenton Journal, a Missouri man named Matthew Burgoyne has been arrested for ripping the plaque off of the burial monument of Daniel Boone in Defiance, MO, cutting it into pieces, and selling it to local scrap yards for $100. While awful, this crime would normally elude our attention — except that the plaque was not only a defiant broadside in the Daniel Boone Bone War, it was also a powerful talisman among those who know the secret of statue-burnishing. Boone’s bronze nose had been buffed to a shiny bulls-eye by visitors anxious to glom some of the pioneer’s lucky mojo.

The plaque had been in place for 93 years, so perhaps its protective hoodoo was exhausted, enabling its theft and destruction. Or, it may have become super-duper powerful from nearly a century of rubbing — and therein lies a possible darker purpose to Burgoyne’s crime.

The news story slyly states that “two small remaining pieces of the plaque” survived (they were found in the house of Burgoyne’s mom), and hints that they may be tossed into the melting pot when a replacement plaque is cast. Could one of those pieces be Daniel Boone’s lucky nose? Perhaps Burgoyne’s plan all along had been to keep this most powerful proboscis for himself, and sell off the rest of the plaque for peanuts as a diversion.

We hope that a replacement is put in place soon so that visitors can start rubbing it again. The plaque, like characters in a fantasy game, will become more powerful when it regenerates.

Sections: Attraction News
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Carranza’s 80th - Flight from Obscurity?

July 12, 2008

This year we made it out to the anniversary event at the otherwise lonely Emilio Carranza Crash Site Memorial on Saturday afternoon, July 12, 2008. Ever since the “Lindbergh of Mexico” went down in Tabernacle, NJ in 1928, Mount Holly American Legion Post 11 has conducted an annual ceremony to honor and remember him. It’s also an opportunity to recount the role of the Legion Post in cordoning off the crash site and escorting the aviator’s body out of the Pine Barrens.

Here’s our short video of the opening moments of the ceremony, with the entrance of the color guard, dignitaries from the Mexican consulate and a surprising number of Carranza relatives:

Video: 80th Carranza Crash Memorial Service

The program included the laying of a dozen or more wreaths at the monument, a three-time flyover by a lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol, a “reenactment,” a firing squad, salute and taps — along with several speakers. A simultaneous ceremony was taking place in Mexico City at Carranza’s grave site.

Is Carranza too famous now in the US to be considered an obscure and neglected hero, the neat little box we’ve always kept him in? We recall one of the speakers today saying something like: “Our Carranza is now everyone’s Carranza,” as she introduced a pair of filmmakers finishing up the SECOND documentary made about the pilot and his crash…

So has Carranza gone mainstream? We’d argue that he still hasn’t cleared the trees on that one…

Three days earlier at Lakehurst Naval Base (an hour or so north of Tabernacle), we’d asked a pair of Hindenburg crash site guides (and flight history experts) if they knew about Carranza’s crash site and the upcoming 80th gala. Both gentlemen wracked their brains, but couldn’t recall ever hearing of the guy.

This isn’t a bad thing, because it means the story of Carranza has the potential to find new groups and new generations to inspire. Not like overexposed, worn out Mr. Lindbergh (The “Carranza of the US,” as some no doubt refer to him).

And we anticipate the annual service will always hold new surprises, even if the 80th was a special milestone. This year, for example, at the base of the monument was a model plane resembling the Mexico-Excelsior, along with a strut-like metal item. Turns out it is a piece of the actual plane grabbed from the crash site, but now relinquished to the respectful stewardship of American Legion Post 11. But it lay right there, as it probably did 80 years ago.

Sections: Attraction News, Video
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Caveman Statue Triggered Miracle In Oregon

July 10, 2008

We tracked reports of the Independence Day incineration of the Grants Pass Caveman back in 2004, and followed up on his eventual, better-than-ever resurrection. But an article in the Rouge River Press sets out new details about John Stripling, the man who saved the statue, which grabbed our attention like a Neanderthal grabbing at a flame.

Stripling, a fiberglass manufacturer, moved to southern Oregon in 2001 after an automobile accident had left him severely crippled. When he learned of the torching of the Caveman, he “was overcome with compassion and frustration,” according to the story. His emotions only increased when he learned that there was money available to fix the statue, but that no one was willing or able to do the work.

The article continues:

“I got down on my hands and knees and prayed so hard, for hours, I broke out in a sweat with uncontrollable tears streaming down my face,” said Stripling. “When I woke up the next morning, I was able to stand up and walk for the first time in years.”

Within days, Stripling was in contact with the Chamber of Commerce and the Caveman Club, accepting the job of repairing the city mascot.

Perhaps the role of roadside statues as miracle lightning rods isn’t unusual, merely underreported. Our fiberglass totems are, after all, often the focus of great affection, and frequently the tallest thing around.

Sections: Attraction News, Statues
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